


“I’ll bring you home, little brother …”  or Three Times Mycroft Carried Sherlock

by sarcatholic



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Animal Death, Asexual Character, Asexual!Sherlock, Asexuality, BAMF Mycroft, Big Brother Mycroft, Drug Abuse, Drugs, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Kid Mycroft, Kid Sherlock, Kidlock, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Mycroft is a Bit Not Good, Pirates, Protective Big Brother Mycroft, Punk Mycroft, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 15:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9190025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcatholic/pseuds/sarcatholic
Summary: Three moments in Sherlock's life when his brother carried him home. Told from Mycroft's perspective.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [“I’ll bring you home, little brother …” / Three Times Mycroft Carried Sherlock](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/252887) by whimsycatcher. 



> Inspired by whimsycatcher’s breathtaking triptych here: http://whimsycatcher.tumblr.com/post/136598154738. I started this at the beginning of 2016 but wouldn’t have been able to finish it without all that 2016 dealt me. Not beta-ed, Britpicked, or even very well proofread — I want to post this before S4 messes with my headcanons.

Mikey came home from the first week of sixth form to a house overrun with relatives he didn’t know and children he didn’t like, convening for tomorrow’s funeral for Great-Grandma Holmes. The adults chattered interminably about autos and flower arrangements and the mediocre achievements of their children in spelling bees and dressage, the children themselves gossiping over glossy fashion magazines and tussling over whose turn it was to play Donkey Kong on an old handheld. Mikey was all too relieved to be sent to check on Willie, so much younger and yet so much cleverer than all his cousins, outside where he had been banished to play alone.

The early autumn sun cast a faint golden haze on the horizon. Mikey loosened his tie and trailed a hand through the toadflax and corn marigolds, analyzing the pollen tracing his fingers as he followed the path down the unmown estate hills. He found Willie and his Irish setter crouched at the bank of the narrow creek running behind their house. Willie had on an oversized striped jumper and belt of their father’s with one of their mother’s orange scarves tied over his soft brown curls; his toy eye-patch was strapped around his face. He was floating the first of the brown copper beech leaves down the trickle and wiggling the loose tooth he’d been worrying for the past month. One leaf spun over the blue-grey pebbles. His dog gave a single yap as Mikey approached and Willie, without looking up, announced, “Ahoy, Mikey!”

Mikey rolled his eyes at the blurred cirrus clouds above. “Off on another adventure on the high streams?” 

Willie put his hands on his knees and addressed his dog. “What do you say, Captain Redbeard? Should we make him walk the plank?”

Redbeard sniffed intently at Willie’s face.

“Wise choice, Captain!” Willie stroked the dog’s coppery face then turned to Mikey. “He says you may live, but first you must prove your mettle.”

Mikey crossed the creek in one long-legged step. “And how exactly must I do that?”

Willie craned his neck up toward his brother. “By gazing upon the first mate’s ghastly wound without flinching.” He pulled back his upper lip to reveal his loose tooth, which hung by a thread and was starting to ooze blood.

“Willie, that tooth needs to go.”

His little brother’s face scrunched. “That’s not what I meant, Mikey, play along.”

“How long has it been like that? It’s going to get infected if you don’t get it out of there. Just pull it out already.”

Willie stuffed a hand in his dog’s silky fur and started to shy away.

“Here —” Mikey pulled a tissue from his pocket and wrapped it around the tooth, pinching his brother’s fingers around it. “This will give you a good grip. Now pull it out.”

“Noooo!” Willie’s shoulders hunched and tears brimmed in his eyes. Redbeard started to whine.

“Control yourself, Willie! Do you think pirates waited for their mummies to tend their injuries? They’d have died on the high seas. Don’t be stupid. Just tug it out. Like —” Mikey grasped for a metaphor “— like a timber shiver in your flesh. Do it!”

Willie squeezed his eyes shut. He wrapped one hand around Redbeard and with the other quickly yanked out the tooth. His eyes popped wide as he stuck his tongue into the gap and tasted the slight stream of blood.

“We did it, Captain Redbeard! We defeated the fearsome Kraken-tooth!” He danced along the bank with his barking dog before they both dropped to sit in the dust, Willie leaning with sinking eyelids into Redbeard’s soft coat.

“All right, first mate.” Mikey jiggled Willie’s shoulder. “Time you were back on dry land.”

“Piggyback ride for the wounded?”

“Okay, okay.” He knelt for Willie to climb on him. “I’ll carry you home, little brother.”

Mikey hoisted him onto his back and set off back up the hill, Redbeard trotting behind them. Butterflies rippled with the breeze across the golden flowers ahead — like tiny sails over the bounding main.


	2. Two

A rumble of thunder retreated into the distance as Mike approached the schoolyard. Though he’d planned to stay in the city to take driving classes before the summer term started, Mummy had relentlessly pleaded with him to visit little Willie, who hadn’t been the same since they’d put down Redbeard a week ago, and maybe seeing his big brother would cheer him up? He pulled his carton of cigarettes from the pocket of his studded leather vest and tugged one out, hoping to have something to do with his hands if his little brother got teary. But as he rounded the hedge bordering the schoolyard he found Willie very much on the losing side of a fistfight against four boys each twice his size.

He tucked the cigarette behind his ear and strode into the muddy scuffle.

“Oi, you bastards —” He grabbed the nearest two boys by their grimy hair and yanked their heads back. They immediately let go of Willie’s soiled jumper. Mike threw them to the ground, their skulls colliding when their faces hit the dirt. “Are you such cowards that you always gang up on weaklings?”

The other two boys’ jaws dropped, their fistfuls of dirt frozen at shoulder height, and they looked in confusion from Mike’s scrawny freckled biceps to their moaning mud-grimed friends.

“Drop the boy and the clods or he’ll be feeding them to you.”

The boys thrust Willie away from themselves and sped off from the schoolyard, their dirty friends stumbling behind them.

Mike wiped his hands on his black jeans and looked down at his brother. He sat with his knees pulled up to his quivering chin, but he couldn’t hide the tears still streaming from his eyes. Mud was ground into his shorts and jumper. His sleeve was torn, the shoulder hem popping, and his scraped elbow had bled onto the cuff of his white shirt. Mike tugged a checked bandana from his back pocket and handed it to him.

“You’ve got to toughen up, Will.” Mike sighed through his nose. “Sentiment is a chemical defect found on the losing side. You can’t outwit them if you don’t have your wits about you.”

Will clenched his jaw, the bruise on his high cheekbone twitching. “ _I’m not_ —” His voice started out angry but broke off. His eyes burned through their glisten as he turned them down to the dirt.

Mycroft held out his hands. “Come on. I’ll bring you home, little brother.”

Will continued to stare unfocused at the ground, but finally his shoulders sagged in toward his chest and he exhaled a long, heavy breath. With his eyes closed, he allowed Mike to grasp his hands and swing him onto his back, wincing at every shift and stretch.

They set off towards home, rounding the hedge and ascending the sidewalk. Will’s breathing slowly lengthened and deepened as settled against his brother’s back. Mike thought he had fallen asleep, when —

“Mike,” he said quietly, “what’s a poof?”

Mike hiked him higher on his back. Normally, he would get his younger brother to discern the etymology ( _“What do we know about English-origin slang?”_ ) and describe the context in which it was used ( _“What were you doing when they said it?”_ ) so he would learn how to figure out the definitions of words on his own. He glanced down at the bloodied knuckles clutching his shirt.

“Will, did Mummy tell you I’ve taken up judo at univ? Maybe I’ll show you some moves this weekend.”

The clouds in the mid-May sky were bruised a ruddy purple, bleeding into a shocking pink as the sunset burnt away the thunderheads. Mike’s boots splashed the glowing puddles across the wet-dark pavement.


	3. Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW: allusions to suspected but not necessarily actual rape (or sex at all).

Mycroft slammed open the splintering door of the hovel of a house, actually swinging half the panel off its rusted-out hinges. The entryway was unlit, and the switches he smacked near the doorjamb produced no light. He dug his keyring from the pocket of his pinstriped trousers and squeezed on the micro flashlight as he moved through the house.

Sherlock had been missing for a month. Well — their parents hadn’t heard from him since he promised to come home for Christmas on the train ticket they bought him, but then never showed. He’d sent emails about his degree progress all through December, but further inquiry through Mycroft’s growing network revealed that he hadn’t seen his tutor since late November. Sherlock wouldn’t answer persistent calls from any phone, and just yesterday his number played a message that it was no longer in service. Mycroft had limited resources as a middle-ranking member of MI6, but that didn’t stop him from spending every waking hour since Boxing Day tracking his brother down, walking the streets himself since New Year’s. This was the tenth location he’d searched in six days. Mycroft pushed away the creeping reminder that today was Sherlock’s birthday. 

Where there weren’t frayed oriental rugs, the hardwood floors were stripped. The wallpaper in the kitchen bubbled underneath a film of soot. Glasses of burnt-out incense sticks crowded on the counters around where the stove should have been, the back wall half-gutted of its pipes. In the front room, tea lights were piled precariously on armchairs and emptied bookshelves, the volumes themselves torn open for rolling paper and kindling. The candle glow highlighted smears on the glass windows mouldering in their sashes, and caught the discolored curves of spoons resting beside shielded needles on the end tables. And everywhere — everywhere — were young people: dirty, limp, and very, very high.

He almost missed him — an anonymous indigent splayed on a patchy velour futon, a violet jacket tugged over the sleeves of a too-short hoodie, its cuffs torn (borrowed? stolen?). Gone was the healthy hefty youth they’d seen off to univ, his cheekbones now jutting from his pale face, his curls greasy and falling in his eyes, his jeans slid halfway down his narrow hips.

“Sherlock? Sherlock! Who did this to him?” he barked at the other junkies languishing around the dingy couches and threadbare carpet. Some stirred, none responded, but Sherlock raised his eyebrows, eyes still shut.

“ _Will_ you … calm down, Mycroft. I … mmm … used to … all the time with … mmh … Victor …”

“What do you mean —” He looked over his shoulder at the nearest addicts. “What did you do to him? _Did you hurt him?_ ” He grasped Sherlock’s shoulders. “Did anyone hurt you?”

His brother gave a choking chuckle. Mycroft’s skin prickled at the sound.

“He _left_ me.”

Mycroft shined the flashlight in his brother’s face and pulled open each clammy eyelid with a thumb. His pupils were pinpricks.

“Who left you here? What did they do to you? _Think_ , Sherlock —”

“Mycroft, you arse.” His voice was faint but that didn’t keep the venom from seeping in. “Victor. Victor fucking left me because — ahh …” A flicker of pink traced his cheeks. “… Shooting up with him — wasn’t enough for him. Not anymore.”

Mycroft’s brow constricted. He swung the flashlight beam from his brother’s gleaming face to his pale left arm, and the gradient of dark crusted bruises tracking up his veins.

“But Sherlock, did he … _hurt_ you?”

His brother raised his discolored forearm, and a grin that shivered even Mycroft’s icy nerves crawled onto Sherlock’s face.

“I don’t feel anything.”

Mycroft shut his eyes and pulled in a centering breath. Releasing it, he straightened his tie. “All right, now.” He crouched behind the futon and grasped Sherlock under his shoulders. “I’ll bring you home, little brother.”

With his brother’s deadman’s weight draped over his back, Mycroft picked his way out of the dark house. A government car idled for them at the end of the street. Mycroft held tight to his brother’s knees as he carried him through the dim slush-filled sidewalks of Southwark.


End file.
